urn:taro:utexas.cah.00245A Guide to the Jean Van Heijenoort Papers,
1946-1988Text converted by SPI Content Sciences Inc.,
April 2003.Finding aid written in English.September 26, 2003Edited with XmetaL 2 by Kristy Sorensen according to instructions
in
TARO 2 EAD 2002 Editing Instructions.
Descriptive Summary
Van Heijenoort, Jean,
1912-Jean Van Heijenoort Papers,
1946-1988Materials are written in English and French.16 ft. manuscript,
typescript, printed. Dolph Briscoe Center for American
History, The University of Texas at
AustinCollection documents the
career of Jean van Heijenoort (1912-1986) in mathematical logic and its
history.
Related Material

Material related to van Heijenoort's years (1932-1939) as personal
secretary to Leon Trotsky is at the Houghton Library at Harvard University.

Jean van Heijenoort was born in Creil, France, on July 13, 1912. He was
educated at the Lycée St. Louis in Paris. From 1932 to 1939, he served as Leon
Trotsky's personal secretary. Van Heijenoort left Trotsky in 1939 and came to
the United States, where his interests turned to mathematical logic. He
received his Ph.D. from New York University in 1949, and taught in the New York
University Mathematics Department until 1965, when he moved to the Department
of Philosophy and the History of Ideas at Brandeis University, becoming
Professor Emeritus in 1977. He died in Mexico City on March 28, 1986.

Van Heijenoort is best-known for his work in the history of logic; he
was the editor of

From Frege to Gödel: A Source Book in
Mathematical Logic, 1879-1931 (1967). He was also the author of several
non-historical works in mathematical logic. Some of this work appeared in his
Selected Essays (1985), but most remains unpublished.
His experiences with Trotsky are recounted in his With
Trotsky in Exile: From Prinkipo to Coyoacán (1978).

Source:

Jean van Heijenoort,
Former Trotsky Aide, New York Times, April 11, 1986
Scope and Contents

The Jean van Heijenoort Papers consist of two parts: (1) papers
transferred to the Archives of American Mathematics after his death, (2)
records of the preparation of